One Way Ticket Read online

  With a sigh, he indicated to pull over.

  When we got back to HQ, I was in no way surprised to find there wasn’t a handy list of the people already interviewed. We had to trawl through the case notes to find them all and create our own index. By the end, I could see a few of the names Aunt June had mentioned were missing – Simon Richards, Elsie Meadows, and Louise Allen.

  Whilst Addi went to look up their details on the secure server, I typed up a set of notes that had appeared in my in tray during my absence in the deluded hope it would look to any casual observer that I was keeping up with my job.

  “I’ve got addresses for them,” he announced from the doorway ten minutes later. I picked up my coat and bag, waved goodbye to Vara, and we were off again.

  Simon Richards lived in a small apartment complex, in a village five miles away. A few bright red bougainvillea blooms still clung to a vine trailing round his doorway. My mind flicked back to Swindon where rain, no doubt, would be lashing their doorways, and experienced that smug feeling again.

  Addi positioned himself in front of the door and rang the bell. “Let me ask the questions,” he reminded me again.

  The photo hadn’t lied about Mr Richards’ bushy moustache, it still looked like he was munching on a squirrel. It hadn’t revealed he was also about 6 foot 3. He and my tiny aunt would make a strange looking couple.

  Sitting in his Aztec themed living room, I spotted a couple of photos on his wall. They looked like sporting teams not family.

  “Ah yes, poor Tina. She had a heart of gold, that woman. When are you going to catch who did it?” he asked with a slight Welsh lilt, after Addi explained why we were there. “Arsenal,” he said to me.

  I was about to be all affronted when I realised he was talking about the football team in the photos I’d been staring at.

  “That’s just what we’re trying to do sir,” Addi began, “trying to find her killer. Where were you during the afternoon of the 2nd October?”

  “3rd,” I corrected him.

  “You can’t suspect me, surely?” Mr Richards expostulated in a manner that didn’t surprise Addi, but made me glad I wasn’t there on my own.

  After he’d calmed down, Addi established he didn’t have an alibi and Mr Richards got quite het up again. I tried not to cower in my corner of the sofa. If this carried on, I would be asking for danger money.

  “How long had you known her for?” I timidly interrupted his tirade.

  “A few years.”

  “How did she get on with her family?”

  He seemed to be calming down again. “Alright I guess, she didn’t say much about them.”

  “You didn’t hear of any arguments?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know a ‘Paul’ that Tina was friendly with?” Addi said quickly before I could ask another question.

  “No, doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “There were quite a few men who were… friendly with Tina though, weren’t there?” I continued.

  “So?”

  “How would you describe your relationship with her?”

  “Friendly,” he replied sarcastically.

  “Nothing more than that?”

  “No!” he roared at me.

  “Do you know anyone Tina was more friendly with?” Addi asked.

  He sat back. “Why don’t you talk to Roger Bale? He was always poking his nose in.”

  That was a name we hadn’t heard before, Addi actually got his pen out. “Roger Bale? Got an address for him?”

  Mr Richards not only knew it, he was more than happy to write it down for us. Addi took the note and we left, much to my relief.

  “Phew, no alibi and he has a bit of a temper.”

  “We’d better add him to the suspect list,” Addi agreed.

  “It didn’t feel like he did it though,” I told him as I got in the car.

  He slammed his door shut and gave me a look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I hope we’re not going to rely on your ‘feelings’ to solve this case.”

  “I just believed him when he said he wasn’t involved.”

  “They all say that.”

  “I know! Who’s next?”

  He consulted the sheet of paper he’d left on the dashboard. “Louise Allen probably lives the closest, let’s try her.”

  “Louise Allen,” I read from his notes on the way there, “51 years old, been here four years.”

  “That’s about all we know about her.”

  Not quite. We knew she lived on the far side of Kythios in a small, quiet block of flats. We rang her doorbell for a few minutes with no success before trying her neighbours.

  “Haven’t seen her in weeks,” the one we managed to find told us.

  “Could she have gone back to England?” Addi asked.

  “Maybe, she didn’t say anything about it. A lot of people go back for Christmas though, don’t they? I did wonder what’s happened with her job.”

  “She works?”

  “She did. The estate agents down the road, a couple of days a week.”

  We got the details and drove to the estate agents. They were a small outfit with a lot of properties in the window and not many clients inside.

  “Louise took a leave of absence a little over six weeks ago,” the manager, Mr Dimitriou, told Addi from his desk at the back of the shop when he’d recovered from his disappointment that we weren’t customers. “It was a bit out of the blue, no notice. She said her mother was ill back home and she had to get back there.”

  “Have you spoken to her since then?”

  Mr Dimitriou rubbed his earlobe and looked as if he was thinking (of course he could have just been passing wind for all I know). “Not spoken, no. We had an email from her last week, her mother’s not out of danger yet. She said she didn’t know when she’ll be back.”

  “Bit awkward for you,” I commented.

  “It’s our quiet time of the year.” He lowered his voice. “Not that it’s been that busy the rest of the time. To be frank, I’m not sure I’d have had enough work for Louise anyway. Has something happened?”

  “No, we just wanted to have a word with her,” Addi said. “Can you give me a call if she comes back, or gets in touch again?” he asked, handing over a business card.

  “Six weeks,” I said as we left. “That would have been just after Tina was killed.”

  We went back to Louise Allen’s apartment and found another neighbour had returned in the meantime. She hadn’t seen Louise Allen for some considerable time either.

  “And Miss Allen didn’t tell you she was going away?”

  “No. She usually does but not this time.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her?”

  “No.”

  “Does she have any family here?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  I thought I could almost hear the small wheels in Addi’s brain spinning.

  “Is there a spare key to her flat anywhere?” he asked.

  “I have one but she wouldn’t like me to use it if it wasn’t an emergency.”

  “She hasn’t been seen or heard from for a number of weeks. I think we should check her flat,” Addi told her, sounding all authoritative again.

  “Perhaps if I go in with you?” the neighbour suggested.

  “That’s fine.”

  We waited for her to return with the key.

  “You don’t think she’s, you know…dead?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know but I think it’s worth a look. It doesn’t sound as if anyone’s spoken to her for a while. That email the estate agent got could have been from anyone.”

  A shiver ran over me as the neighbour returned.

  “Sorry,” she said, “took me a while to find it.”

  Addi got the key from her and inserted it into the lock.

  “You two should stay back,” he said, “in case…” He didn’t finish the sentence but pressed down the handle and opened the door.

&n
bsp; A wave of putrid smelling air hit us and I immediately thought the worst. I didn’t know what a dead body smelt like but I knew it couldn’t be good.

  Holding a hand up to his nose, Addi edged nervously forwards.

  12 White Lies

  From the doorway, we could see him checking the floor of the living room and behind the sofa.

  “Wait there till I’ve looked in the other rooms,” Addi shouted, advancing further into the flat.

  I felt a bit sick waiting for him to return. It seemed like hours until he was back.

  “It’s clear,” he announced to my surprise.

  “What about that smell?” I asked, stepping gingerly inside.

  “It’s these vegetables, I think,” the neighbour said, pointing at a box of rotting foodstuff by the open plan kitchen.

  The neighbour took the offensive items outside whilst I checked the bedroom and bathroom myself. There was no body.

  “That’s a relief,” her neighbour said when I told her. “Oh, you had me going.”

  “We’ll just look round for some contact details in case she has gone to England.” Addi explained.

  That was our excuse to rifle through the paperwork on the coffee table and in a nearby desk whilst her neighbour fidgeted nervously nearby.

  “Jennifer!” Addi admonished me when I opened the fridge door.

  “What? I’m just checking if she emptied the fridge before she left. Which it looks like she did, by the way. There’s not much in here. I guess she forgot to dump the veg outside.”

  “She must have gone back to England, if she’s cleaned everything out,” her neighbour said.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Addi told her.

  “Of course she has,” I argued, “it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “No, she can’t have done,” he insisted.

  He held up a burgundy coloured object in a rather dramatic way. “I’ve just found her passport.”

  We stood staring at it for a while.

  “But where’s she gone?” her neighbour asked once the discovery had sunk in. “She hasn’t been here for weeks.”

  Addi shrugged. “I don’t know but we need to find out.” He motioned to me: “Get that address book, we’ll take that back to the station with us.” He turned to the neighbour. “I’ll raise a missing persons report for her. Can you give me a list of her friends?”

  The neighbour went to her apartment to check some phone numbers for us.

  “We should have a look for her keys,” I told Addi.

  “What keys? Like these?” He pulled a keyring with two keys on it from a drawer in the desk and handed it to me. I tried both of them in the front door. Neither of them worked.

  “No, not them. Try to find her front door keys.” Walking over to a small coat rack by the side of the door, I rifled through pockets.

  “No keys,” I told him. “We haven’t found a mobile phone, purse or wallet either.

  “Handbag. Women always carry that stuff in their handbag,” Addi said.

  I ignored his stereotyping and looked through a couple of handbags hanging on the coat rack. Addi checked the bedroom.

  “There are a couple more handbags in there but they’re empty,” he reported.

  “Wherever she is, she took her keys and wallet with her. I don’t know how significant that is.”

  The neighbour returned and handed her information to Addi. We finished up and watched her lock the door behind us.

  “So now we have a dead body and a missing person to solve,” I pointed out on the way to the car. “We’re meant to be getting rid of these cases not adding to them.”

  “I’m surprised no one reported her missing,” Addi mused.

  “That’s the problem with expatriate life, I suppose, it’s very transient.”

  He looked at me, confused.

  “They come and they go,” I tried to explain. “It’s very suspicious that she vanished just after Tina’s death, isn’t it?”

  “She could be involved,” Addi agreed.

  “Or she could be another victim?”

  “Could be.”

  “What d’you think we should do next?”

  “I think I should look into Louise Allen’s bank account and check if she’s used her bank cards lately.”

  “And me?”

  “I’m sure there’s something we can find for you to do.”

  Writing up accounts of our interviews wasn’t what I’d had in mind. Why did I have to do all the admin, all the time? Okay, so I was an admin assistant, okay, so it was in my job description, okay, so I wasn’t actually the police officer, are they any reasons why it always had to be me?

  I wrote up the day’s dealings before getting bored, packing up and going home.

  Unfortunately, I surprised a couple of people on the sideboard in the living room when I got there. I was grateful they were still clothed but I’ll never look at that piece of furniture in the same light again.

  “Aunt June! Can’t you do that in your own room? Jeez.”

  She didn’t even have the decency to look that embarrassed. Kostas, on the other hand, ran out of the room like a frightened rabbit.

  “Sorry Jennifer, I didn’t realise you were going to be home early.”

  “Can’t you keep it in your pants?”

  “Keep what in my pants?”

  “Never mind.” We’d slipped into the role reversal thing again. I had a quick look through the slim pile of mail on the table to confirm there wasn’t anything for me per usual.

  “How’s the investigation going?”

  She was just trying to change the subject but I let her. “Advancing. Slowly. I met your Simon Richards today.”

  “Ssh. Not so loud.”

  “Kostas doesn’t know about you and him?”

  “There’s nothing to know about.”

  “Good,” I said, plonking myself down on the sofa. “He’s a nasty customer. Got quite angry with us.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Have you heard anything about this murder?” I asked.

  She finished adjusting her bun and came to join me. “No, what am I meant to be listening for?”

  “Oh, just wondered if there was any gossip going around about Tina.”

  “You want me to solve this case for you as well?”

  “No. Absolutely not. I can crack this case, I’ve certainly read enough crime novels.”

  “That’s hardly the same thing.”

  “Well, I can manage, thank you. I was just hoping for a little local knowledge.”

  “I’m going to the Christian Fellowship on Thursday, that’s always a hotbed of gossip and rumour, I suppose I could keep my ears open. By the way,” she continued, “I’ve realised you need to get out more. No, hear me out,” my aunt said as I opened my mouth to protest. “Kostas pointed out you probably wouldn’t have gotten so drunk the other week if you went out more often−”

  “Kostas?”

  “So I’ve decided to take you out sometimes. Think about where you’d like to go.” She got up and moved to the door. “I’d better go check Kostas is alright.”

  She left me fuming at the thought of them talking about me behind my back. This was starting to be a lot like living with my mother.

  “What are we going to do today?” I asked Addi the next morning once he’d shown up for work. I’d noticed the pressure he complained he was under hadn’t made him any more punctual.

  “I’m going to check if there are updates on Louise Allen’s whereabouts. I rang her mother in England last night. Louise isn’t there. Her mother’s not ill, didn’t know why Louise would tell someone that. She says Louise rang her last week and sounded fine. It wasn’t a number her mother recognised but it was a Cyprus dialling code.”

  “So she is definitely still here.”

  “Louise told her mother she was waiting for a friend to come out of a doctor’s appointment and she was using the payphone outside.”

  “To call Englan
d? That couldn’t be cheap.”

  “Her mother said she wasn’t on the phone long.”

  “Too right, I’m surprised she could afford to say more than hello. Did you get the phone number?”

  “No, I got onto the phone company in Britain but I have to fill in a form before they’ll tell me anything. It could take some time. I’ll go and check if they’ve faxed it through yet.”

  “Alright, come and let me know. I suppose I’ll go back to …the typing.”

  Be still my beating heart.

  I was two case notes in and on my second coffee before Addi finally came back.

  “They still haven’t faxed the form over. But I have found out her bank card has been used three times lately.” He continued: “Once at a supermarket twelve miles away to pay for some shopping, then five days later at an ATM about thirty miles north-east, and last week at an ATM fifty-five miles east of here. She withdrew 400 euros each time.”

  “So she’s living somewhere else, on the run?”

  “It looks like it. We’d better start ringing round this list of her friends. See if anyone else has heard from her.”

  “We? Am I allowed to do that?”

  “Sure, it’s fine.”

  No doubt I would also be allowed to write up the results.

  Addi started me off on the list before conveniently remembering a piece of paper he’d forgotten and leaving me to it. After a mighty long time, he returned. By then, I’d already phoned half of them.

  “No one’s heard from her so far,” I said.

  “You’re doing a good job, don’t let me stop you.”

  I held out the rest of the list. “You’re the policeman, as you keep reminding me.”

  “But it’s your job to liaise with the expats,” he countered.

  In the end, we agreed to split the rest of the list between us. Of the ones we could reach, no one had spoken to Louise Allen in the last six weeks.”

  “She would appear to have vanished,” I said, at the end. “What next?”

  “I don’t know, the phone trace may be a while yet.”

  “We haven’t spoken to the other person on our list, Elsie Meadows,” I reminded him. “Shall we go and have a word with her? After lunch, obviously. Let’s hope she hasn’t gone missing either.”